For most NFL hopefuls, it's back to school after the draft

The question, in this or any NFL draft, is always going to be about now. But the answers, the real answers, don't come until later.

"I really believe you don't take all-pros in the draft, you make them all-pros," said John Elway, the Broncos' executive vice president of football operations. "Guys have the ability, the mental makeup, the production to be good football players for you and they fit what you do. But in the end, not every guy is going to be developed at the same pace and not every position is the same. You have to always have your eye on the big picture."

That means some players selected in the draft this week will be ready to play this fall, but most won't. Some are drafted for 2015 play and beyond.

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Ask just about any scout, general manager or coach in the NFL which position leads the way in degree of difficulty to evaluate, and the answer typically is quarterback.

"Quarterback is the hardest, the most difficult position in professional sports, not just ours," said Broncos coach John Fox. "And it isn't close."

Having rookies such as Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III and Russell Wilson lead their teams to the playoffs is the exception. A rude awakening awaits most quarterbacks.

"I think it's the speed of things," said Broncos backup Brock Osweiler, a second-round draft pick last year. "It is more complicated in terms of schemes and the looks you get on defense, but the speed that everything happens is very different. The time you have to make decisions is cut way down, the number of decisions you have to make is way up and everybody on defense can run."

Split-second decisions also make the offensive line the next-most-difficult position in which to make an immediate impact. Many in the NFL believe that's especially true for teams with zone schemes, where players are asked to discern "the most dangerous" defender in their assigned area on a play rather than simply locking on a single defender at the snap.

"I also think for a lot of guys, it just takes time to get what I call an NFL body," Fox said. "It's there in every position, but with the linemen I think it's big. I always say this is a bigger, faster, stronger league and in the offensive line you can really see that."

In what would be a surprise to many outside the league, the third-most- difficult position for a rookie to contribute may be wide receiver. The elite wideouts in college football rarely face press coverage, with a defender just inches from them at the line of scrimmage. They are accustomed to running several yards toward a defender already backing away, with room to make their cuts.

"It's a physical league," said Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey. "Sometimes you can bother those guys by getting your hands on them right away. The guys who make it and do things quickly (at wide receiver) are the guys who learn how to deal with that."

Linebackers, because of pass-coverage responsibilities, and safeties, because of the need to make presnap adjustments and get everybody lined up properly, fall next in the difficulty line.

So much so that in a year when Broncos linebacker Von Miller was voted the NFL defensive rookie of the year for the 2011 season, he was benched at various times due to missteps in pass coverage.

"That was different," Miller said. "I hadn't really done that before, so it was something I had to work on. I still am, but it was a big difference."

Defensive linemen, cornerbacks and running backs, and to a certain extent tight ends, are considered to have the easiest transition to the NFL. The rookie-of-the-year results are telling. Since the inception of the league's offensive and defensive rookie of the year awards in 1967, running backs have won 31 times (67.4 percent). Defensively, linebackers have fared especially well with 25 winners -- including two linebackers (Buddy Curry and Al Richardson) who shared the award in 1980.

"Hey, it's all hard," Fox said. "If the jobs were easy, everybody would do them."